Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event • Hacker News Board

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#281

Post by pfarnsworth » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #273

ciarannolan wrote: post #8

I feel like the good faith presumption for this company has to have shifted by now. Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.), recording content, etc. We're talking about the data of 200M+ users. I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time. >The company has acknowledged that much of its product…

In my workplace and from my perspective, I don't know how Zoom became trustworthy in the first place except through growth hacking and selling iPads with their software on it under the 'Zoom Rooms' name. Besides that, why defend a company or a corporation in the first place? It's a damn shame that people are more enervated by corporate strife than by the suffering of our fellow beings.

To be fair, Zoom is the best video conference software I've ever used. It's so much better than Skype or anything created by Google, Facebook, etc. When I first started using it at work 5 years ago, I was blown away at how stable it was, and how many people could connect at the same time. It just worked.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#282

Post by Aunche » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:38 PM UTC

ciarannolan wrote: post #8

I feel like the good faith presumption for this company has to have shifted by now. Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.), recording content, etc. We're talking about the data of 200M+ users. I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time. >The company has acknowledged that much of its product…

> Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse?

It makes perfect sense to boycott Zoom based on their security issues, but does the presumption of innocence mean nothing anymore? It shouldn't be difficult to prove that Zoom is actively trying to block Chinese activists.

China banned Zoom during the trade war. Are you going to treat that as evidence that Zoom isn't colluding with the CCP? Why is Zoom not embracing end-to-end encryption to free users evidence that they are beholden to China, but Zoom committing to end-to-end encryption for paid users not evidence of the contrary? This type of circumstantial cherry picking is how conspiracy theories sprout.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#283

Post by xyproto » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

gnud wrote: post #144

mushufasa wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried Google Meet, Jitsi, and some other things, but Zoom is the only service that my 6+ year old laptop can handle for more than 5 min without nosediving into 100% CPU usage and freezing up. Does anyone have other suggestions? Either for other services or for troubleshooting Jitsi?

You could give Whereby [1] a try. I really liked it when it was named "appear.in" (that's now a completely different company), and used it for a bit, until my work switched to Teams. Whereby is, as far as I can tell, completely owned by a Norwegian registered company. 1: https://whereby.com

The name was probably too similar to another Norwegian company that is also named Appear.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#284

Post by J5892 » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #7

This kind of thing is the exact reason why I was disturbed by the Keybase.io sale to Zoom and abandoned my account. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23105253 ) I've been currently using Zoom during the pandemic because as a product it's still the best (and I signed up for a discounted year of pro), but I won't give them any money again.

Whoa. I didn't know that. Even though my trust of Zoom isn't completely eliminated (yet), that absolutely negates my reasons for using keybase.

Granted, I haven't used it in a while because they put me in a position where recovering my account is impossible.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#285

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #254

vikramkr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be required for enforcement against illegal activity, either by law or by desire to avoid ending up as one of those platforms that endorses pure freedom of speech and ends up being labeled by society as a haven of crime and extremism. Would be hard to keep control of that without centralized control.

> those platforms that endorses pure freedom of speech and ends up being labeled by society as a haven of crime and extremism Oh, You mean like physical conversations between people? > Might be required for enforcement against illegal activity "required"? You mean, it would _help_ governments enforce laws. If enforcing the law is a supreme consideration, then it's required. For me - it is not.

Physical Conversations isn't a brand of a company that would be negatively affected by bad publicity (although physical locations/neighborhoods with bad reputations that have trouble attracting investment etc are certainly good examples of this effect). You're not gonna say "avoid physical conversations, that's where criminals hang out." But people can say "avoid that neighborhood/avoid Zoom, that's where all the criminals hang out." So the neighborhood and zoom have incentives to police conduct occurring within their borders.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#286

Post by sjg007 » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

ciarannolan wrote: post #8

I feel like the good faith presumption for this company has to have shifted by now. Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.), recording content, etc. We're talking about the data of 200M+ users. I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time. >The company has acknowledged that much of its product…

Yep.. zoom is done.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#287

Post by odshoifsdhfs » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #154

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand this. I am not American so may have a different perspective, but if by being private, you are ok with censoring, then you are ok with anyone banning blacks from their businesses, or not hiring gays, or only allowing women to go up the corporate ladder if they sleep around. After all, it is their private company, so why should I care about sexual harassment, blocking people, etc as long I am…

I can anticipate the counter-argument to this: "well, discrimination based on race and gender is illegal, so they can't do that". Which is true, but kinda misses the point: it amounts to a position that discrimination and censorship is ok as long as it doesn't run afoul of local laws. If local laws reflect the totality of ethical and moral positions, that would be fine, but I think we all know that laws tend to fall…

The thing is, imo, we need to stand up for our values. Segregation ended because people raised up. Sexual Harassment laws the same.

But seems now, if it is a Tech company, people judge them differently. Wether Facebook or Twitter or Zoom, 'oh I can vote with my feet'. But if that was the case 30-40-60 years ago, we wouldn't have the 'progress' we see now.

And while I am opposed to child porn, if it is legal, I am not in favour of having private companies doing the censorship, but I would ask for people to be active on changing that law. Since that is opening a door I am not comfortable opening. We had YouTube/Twitter banning/blocking content that went against WHO guidelines, but we also had WHO guidelines being retracted one day after they were published. We had for days/weeks recommendations from the WHO that were just flat wrong, and we shouldn't let private companies censor information based on 3rd parties that are not 'innocent'.

And as your point stands, you are ok with shutting and account based on child porn (Assuming in this context it was legal), but would you be also for someone being banned documenting Police brutality in the BLM protests? Both are(in hypothetical) sense legal, so the only thing we have here is your own morality doing that judgement. And different cultures/religions will have different views on all that, thus I believe as long as it is legal, private companies should never have the right to censor 3rd party speech if they provide a platform for that speech.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#288

Post by bo1024 » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

Ntrails wrote: post #180

sp332 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in early June that the company has chosen not to encrypt free calls in order to cooperate with law enforcement. This is incorrect. They don't offer end-to-end encryption, but it is encrypted between each client and the Zoom servers, and they have promised there's no way for a Zoom employee to spy on a conversation without visibly joining the meeting. https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/126…

Either it is E2E encrypted, or it is unencrypted on zoom servers and the only claim that they can reasonably make is that they haven't provided their employees with the tools to observe a call invisibly.

That’s not quite exhaustive. It could be encrypted the whole time, but with Zoom holding the encryption keys. Slight difference, perhaps important.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#289

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #282

ciarannolan wrote: post #8

I feel like the good faith presumption for this company has to have shifted by now. Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.), recording content, etc. We're talking about the data of 200M+ users. I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time. >The company has acknowledged that much of its product…

> Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? It makes perfect sense to boycott Zoom based on their security issues, but does the presumption of innocence mean nothing anymore? It shouldn't be difficult to prove that Zoom is actively trying to block Chinese activists. China banned Zoom during the trade war. Are you going to treat that as evidence that Zoom isn't c…

does the presumption of innocence mean nothing anymore

In a court of law, yes. In the court of public opinion, it has never been that way.

I don't blame people for being suspicious of Zoom. Why wait until the harm has already been done to move to something else?

Zoom knows it has a credibility problem. If Zoom really cared, it would do something to distance itself from China and the Chinese government. But it doesn't.

Re: Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event

#290

Post by hrktb » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #62

at_a_remove wrote: post #35

I wonder if we'll hear the "they're a private company, they can do what they want, it is only censorship if the government does it" routine. I remember about a decade ago when certain parties were so concerned with voices being silenced and "erasure." The same people are now cheering when Facebook, Twitter, and the like shut down certain kinds of speech, with great discretion as to how the "rules" are implemented. Th…

They can do whatever they want as a private company. I can do whatever I want as well. Including leaving zoom. They should have the right to enforce whatever standards they want, and we have the right to disagree and leave.

This is the recipe used by some agencies to avoid scrutiny: have private companies do the job for them.

Your argument’s end point looks like your freedom to only use video conferencing tools that respect your ideals. Would I do that, I’d have to leave my job and stop talking to pretty much anyone.